Re: Thoughts on IBM 360

On Thu, 3 Apr 2025 12:29:36 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

"The 1967 IBM System/360 Model 91 could execute up to 16.6 million
instructions per second."
 
[Wiki]
 
A Raspberry PI PICO could outperform that.

This was IBM’s attempt at the time to compete with the CDC 6000-series
machines. These were designed by the legendary Seymour Cray, who came up
with processors that were an order of magnitude faster than anything else
around -- basically, they were the first “supercomputers”. IBM mounted a
mighty FUD campaign to try to dissuade its customers from buying CDC
machines, promising that its upcoming “360 Model 90” would be way ahead.

When it finally shipped, about two years late, as the Model 91, it fell a
bit short of what was promised.